Reliance Industries

The Reliance Group, founded by Dhirubhai H. Ambani (1932-2002), is India's largest private sector enterprise, with businesses in the energy and materials value chain. The Group's annual revenues are US$ 44 billion. The flagship company, Reliance Industries Limited, is a Fortune Global 500 company and is the largest private sector company in India. The Group's activities span exploration and production of oil and gas, petroleum refining and marketing, petrochemicals (polyester, fibre intermediates, plastics and chemicals), textiles, retail and special economic zones.

In June 2010, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im), a government agency that helps businesses ship goods overseas, rejected a loan guarantee to Reliance Industries to buy some $600 million in equipment from Wisconsin-based Bucyrus for the coal-fired Sasan Ultra Mega Power Project. The rejection was in part due to the bank instituting a formal carbon policy in November 2009, in response to environmental concerns. Days after turning down the request by Reliance, state Democrats complained that 1,000 jobs would be lost if the deal didn’t go through, and on the eve of a visit from President Obama to Wisconsin, the bank asked Reliance to submit a revised bid that added a pledge to build “among the largest renewable projects built in India to date” with the help of American green tech. The bank calls the situation “a win-win” for the environment and exporters. Some environmentalists call it greenwashing. “They collapsed like a wet paper bag,” says Doug Norlen of the nonprofit group Pacific Environment. Ex-Im is now considering an even bigger coal project in South Africa.

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